September 29, 2010

He's here to tell you that the Tea Party movement you see out there is actually the Tea Kettle movement "because all it’s doing is letting off steam" — and the real Tea Party movement is... well, guys like him:

The important Tea Party movement, which stretches from centrist Republicans to independents right through to centrist Democrats, understands this at a gut level...

This = "our politics has become just another form of sports entertainment, our Congress a forum for legalized bribery and our main lawmaking institutions divided by toxic partisanship to the point of paralysis."

... and is looking for a leader with three characteristics. First, a patriot...

A patriot isn't a characteristic. It's a type of person.

Second, a leader who persuades Americans that he or she actually has a plan not just to cut taxes or pump stimulus, but to do something much larger — to make America successful, thriving and respected again.

A leader isn't a characteristic.

And third, someone with the ability to lead in the face of uncertainty and not simply whine about how tough things are — a leader who believes his job is not to read the polls but to change the polls.

Someone isn't a characteristic.

Convert those 3 items to characteristics: patriotism, leadership, and... uh... leadership. That's what the real tea partiers know and the kettlefolk can't get through their steam-puffed noggins.

Democratic Pollster Stan Greenberg told me that when he does focus groups today this is what he hears: “People think the country is in trouble and that countries like China have a strategy for success and we don’t....”

Here it comes. The part of the Friedman column where we find out that China does it better. This time, a pollster is rolled out to mouth what I presume is the thesis of Friedman's new best seller.

And supposedly, Friedman has told us what the "real Tea Party" is. As for the Tea Party movement that he says is fake and would like to disparage as "Tea Kettle":

That is not to say that the energy behind it is not authentic (it clearly is) or that it won’t be electorally impactful (it clearly might be)....

To me, that is a plan that starts by asking: what is America’s core competency and strategic advantage, and how do we nurture it? Answer: It is our ability to attract, develop and unleash creative talent. That means men and women who invent, build and sell more goods and services that make people’s lives more productive, healthy, comfortable, secure and entertained than any other country.

I'm thinking of the brainwashing in A Clockwork Orange, with business drivel replacing the violent images. Every time he hears Beethoven's Fifth, he tries to leverage his core synergies.

Appeals to patriotism mean nothing to me as do calling someone unAmerican. I care about the citizens of our country being served by our government and being able to freely exercise all the right guaranteed them by the Constitution.

I feel no particular loyalty or obligation to a country that doesn't do that or refuses to do that.

Friedman says "People think the country is in trouble and that countries like China have a strategy for success and we don’t."

They really don't have editors at the NYT. If they did, there is no way they would let him get away with the "people think ..." dodge. Who thinks that? All he is saying is "Tom Friedman thinks" but camouflaging his naked assertion with the vague term "people" to make it look like he is repeating common wisdom. It is just terrible writing and thinking.

If you tried that on Wikipedia, you'd get slapped with a "Weasel words" banner; yet in America's "newspaper of record" it's completely fine.

We don't want to be China, and we don't need a government plan. We need freedom, period. We can make our own plans. Yes, us citizens who know our business, our neighbors our interests, better than a bunch of failed lawyers living a privileged, disconnected and dysfunctional lifestyle in a far away city that is itself dysfunctional.

The Chinese government can actually do what they want, much more than here, but even the Communists there know to stay out of the way of entrepreneurs. They are the fastest right moving economy in history and they call it Communist.

The American dream of enjoying the fruits of your labors has been replaced with a life as state workers who send half of their earning to the state after working according to volumes of Regulations, that Communists long ago abandoned or never adopted.

We have been watching this for decades, and the left still has the same failed prescription. There is no strategy that can beat freedom. Only totalitarianism has the power to even fight, but in the end it too dies from within. Which way are we heading?

We went through several years hearing from experts like Tom Friedman that Japan Does It Better.

I never bought that, and (oh wonderful me) I was right. Japan is a closed society in many aspects, lacking social and economic fluidity, over influenced by historical elites and more than a little racist. They also have a number of structural economic deficiencies (aging demographic, lack of agricultural innovation, gaps in natural resource base, high transportation costs. This all caught up with them.

The Chinese also have immense challenges and weaknesses, the first of which is lack of transparency politically and economically. Since a man like Friedman can see so little of what is actually happening, he can conclude that they are doing a bang up job.

They are not. They are subject to error, sometimes great error, as are all humans and human societies. We just can't see easily what the consequences of the Chinese errors will be.

Is American society any better off in ability to recognize, absorb and correct error? In the past we have been. Unfortunately that does not guarantee that the future will mirror our past.

In the sense of "kilter" or "base" or even "key," both Dowd and Friedman are simply always "off." As soon as I saw that at 6AM, I thought "spared another zany silly bunch of outtakes while she gets her life back together..."

And Tom, he simply is a Midwestern beached whale on a shore of diversity.

Even though there are many people on the right who fulfill his 3 characteristics, he would never point to one of those people as the leader we've been waiting for. That person would have to be on the Left.

Example: Chris Christie1) Patriot2) Has a plan to make his state (as a microcosm of the US) successful again.3) Doesn't govern according to the polls.

Is he a paragon of Friedmanesque virtue? I can guess the answer to that question.

"Does anyone actually read Friedman's best sellers? After I read a thorough skewering of his Lexus and the Olive Tree I've been unable to take him seriously".

Yes sadly enough. Among a certain breed of suburban middle aged thoughtful faux intellectuals, Friedman is a God. I meet people all the time in my suburban Washington neighborhood who prominently display his books in their homes. They are generally well meaning and a little less crazy than the followers of Paul Krugman (the Kruginuts as I call them).

Lets see now: "I've seen the future and it works." And of course: "He made the trains run on time." Now we have "The China Way."Not to mention "We are the ones we have been waiting for!" And the paeans made to Castro's Cuba--especially health-care (the latest being Micheal Moore's movie "SICKO") and education--are too numerous to list. Has there EVER been a leftist totalitarian regime that journalists don't have a TOTAL "slobberling love affair" with?

Friedman seems to be desperately trying to convince us that we just don't understand the problem. But what he doesn't seem to understand is that: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem".

Maybe I am a bit more gullible than most, but I have read some of his books, and he does have some decent premises and observations. But, I think that where goes adrift is when he starts to delve into the political.

He fails to look at the Chinese critically and doesn't realize that while their form of government may be advantageous over the short run, it has humongous problems.

One is that because it is top-down, when mistakes are made, they are gigantic. The Three Gorges Dam project is just one example of this.

China is doing reasonably well where the government is essentially turning a blind eye to capitalism. But when their central planning steps in, problems invariably ensue.

One thing that the country does not have is a relief valve. And, the divide between the haves and have-nots is increasing. Not necessarily at the top, as is the complaint here, but between the those who have joined the capitalistic movement and the rural peasants, who, in the end, have always been the power base since harnessed by Mao.

Westerners always attribute extra brain power to Asians. Guys like Friedman then go off on nonsensical theories about cultural attributes that are beyond our understanding but which contribute mightily to the success of the Asian. I am reminded of the middle 1980s when the Japanese were "buying up America" and had added Rockefeller Center to their trophy case. Only a few years later they had to give it back, sold for a fraction of what they had paid. The super rational, long term thinking Japanese, to use a technical word, fucked up.

(In China)"...the divide between the haves and have-nots is increasing. Not necessarily at the top, as is the complaint here...."

I'm glad you acknowledge this is happening here, but what do you mean "at the top"?

In our country the richest are become ever richer, and the poor and the middle class are becoming poorer. How you parse this divide as being "at the top"? Or perhaps I just don't understand your intended meaning.

Tom Friedman represents the class of intellectual taken in by political fads. This has been going on ever since progressives first fell in love with Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Ilych Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Friedman et al are advocates of H. G. Wells' "Liberal Fascism" which always turns out to be rather illiberal dictatorship.

President Elect Franklin Roosevelt wrote a little book called "Looking Forward." The book received rave reviews from the above mentioned Mussolini. Roosevelt took said review by Il Duce as a compliment.

You are a moron. Employment went up until the bubble induced by Fanny and Freddie burst. Now we learn from Barnie Frank that well it was the F-troop twins that was the root cause. I guess now that he isn't on the payroll he doesn't have to carry their water.

To me, that is a plan that starts by asking: what is America’s core competency and strategic advantage, and how do we nurture it? Answer: It is our ability to attract, develop and unleash creative talent. That means men and women who invent, build and sell more goods and services that make people’s lives more productive, healthy, comfortable, secure and entertained than any other country.

My goodness, this si straight out of the Mission Statement Cargo Cult for clueless managers that afflicted organizations in the Nineties. You may remember the apotheosis of this fad:

"The New Ventures Mission is to scout profitable growth opportunities in relationships, both internally and externally, in emerging, mission inclusive markets, and explore new paradigms and then filter and communicate and evangelize the findings."

I wondered what had become of all the idiots who took that crap seriously, and this explains it: they're the people who buy Friedman's books.

Stopping the bleeding for liberals is having the jobless rate go from 8 to 9.6. Only 1.6 percentage points, see? Sane people with math skills see that as a twenty percent (20%) increase in unemployment. Numeracy is not a strong suit for the left.

There are four thousand years of Chinese history. During most of that time, the Chinese people enjoyed a higher level of civilization and prosperity than the other populations of the world. The great leaps forward made by the west during the Renaissance came more from finding pragmatic uses for Chinese inventions than from translating Aristotle into the vernacular.....The flaw of Chinese civilization was in relying too much on the wisdom of the Mandarins and the authority of the Emperor's central government. Merchants and soldiers were despised by the Mandarins. The Mandarins had reached their positions by hard study and competitive exams. They regarded themselves as certifiably smarter than soldiers and merchants. This worked out fine so long as China did not have to defeat the Mongols or undersell the British.....China, after all the dust and smoke of Mao, still relies on the primacy of the central government and the wisdom of its academically trained bureaucrats. It's no wonder that a Mandarin like Friedman would find much to admire there. I too question his gullibility, but, based on history, I don't discount the possibility that the Chinese will find some way to make it work.

No...Dubya chose to invade two countries for no purpose and with no goals and thus eagerly began America's disastrous and financially ruinous Terror Wars...and he chose to cut taxes simultaneously, with result that the government's revenues began to drop just as he was ratcheting our expenses dramatically up. (Kind of like quitting your job and the next day starting a drunken spending spree. Eventually, those bills are going to come due.)

No, Dubya chose to fight and destroy the 2 groups that were responsible for the 9/11 attacks, unlike Willie and The Zero, who think lobbing a few missles at a couple of camels for political cover counts as defending the American people.

You know the level of analysis, and writing ability, in these comments so exceeds that of Mr. Friedman, it actually gives me hope. There are a lot of smart people out there, they just aren't journalists.

There are actually two Tea Party movements in America today: the one that actually exits and one that is Friedman fantasy. A fantasy mass-movement that coincidentally espouses all of his trendy, shallow, visions.

"No, Dubya chose to fight and destroy the 2 groups that were responsible for the 9/11 attacks...."

Who? Al Qaeda? They escaped Afghanistan and have not been destroyed. The Taliban? They had nothing to do with 9/11 and have not been destroyed. Saddam Hussein? He had nothing to do with 9/11 and he was destroyed, but so was his country, which is in a worse state now than under his rule.

"...unlike Willie and The Zero, who think lobbing a few missles at a couple of camels for political cover counts as defending the American people."

Obama seems to be continuing with Bush's war policies and practices, so if you want to denigrate his bloody escalation in Afghanistan as "lobbing a few missles at a couple of camels," (you forgot all the civilians who got in the way of those missles), I don't know how much you obviously must have scorned Bush's equally fruitless efforts there.

Bush did not have to start those wars--he should not have started those wars--for many reasons--and the claim that our economy under Bush was harmed because "Bush had to deal with a war on terror" is revisionist baloney. He could have responded to Al Qaeda without going to war, and he would probably have had as much or more success at capturing those behind the 9/11 attacks, without the dear cost in human lives and our national treasure.

In our country the richest are become ever richer, and the poor and the middle class are becoming poorer. How you parse this divide as being "at the top"? Or perhaps I just don't understand your intended meaning.

Actually, I think that you would have a hard time making the argument that our poor are getting poorer. Maybe by their cash income, but not if you include all the non-cash benefits they get.

The statistics on how many TVs, homes, cars, cell phones, air conditioning, etc. that they own is amazing, given the hype that we have heard about how they are suffering.

It is the middle class, right now, that is getting squeezed in the middle, paying to support the "poor" in a style that much of the middle class didn't enjoy a decade or two ago.

That said, my point is that we have a percent or two who are making a huge amount of money, but, contrary to the instigation by the left, there isn't nearly as much resentment there as they would like.

In China (the ChiComs, not Taiwan) there is a huge divide right now between the emerging middle class and city dwellers versus the rural peasants. And it is getting bigger fairly quickly.

And, one of the weaknesses that I see with the Red Chinese situation is that they have no real mechanism to release the stress. They have no meaningful elections, and many of their ruling class are geriatrics, and, to a great extent separated from both these classes.

In the leftist fantasy world of the Robert Cooks, as long as they can say it, it must be possible.

"He could have responded to Al Qaeda without going to war, and he would probably have had as much or more success at capturing those behind the 9/11 attacks, without the dear cost in human lives and our national treasure."

Riiight. Because we all know that President Bush had the option to sprinkle pixie dust from the back of flying unicorns to end terrorism and defend America.

Re ownership of property among the poor--Bruce Hayden's position is supported by census data--all one has to do is go to factfinder.census.gov and look at ownership of the items mentioned by the categories of income.

Or you can take the HD House approach and demonstrate your ignorance of data and inability to find it. Haden is correct, House is, as usual, wrong.

"Riiight. Because we all know that President Bush had the option to sprinkle pixie dust from the back of flying unicorns to end terrorism and defend America."

M. Simon said:

"He should have sent them a cake and told them yo have a nice day."

Apparently it doesn't occur to either of you that there are ways short of war in which nations deal with threat assessments and to actual violent acts inflicted on them. In fact, war is supposed to be the ultimate "last choice." Do you assume that invading countries should be the proper default response by America to any violent acts taken against us, (or, as in the case of Iraq, even where there are no violent acts taken against us)?

Why do we have intelligence networks and cooperative working relationships with international police agencies if we do not use them where appropriate?

M.Simon also said:

"Or he could have asked the countries (sic--you mean country, singular) harboring them to turn them over. Oh? What? He did that and they refused. Well then. Never mind."

That's popularly known as extradition. We don't have an extradition agreement with Afghanistan, but they expressed willingness to hand over bin Laden and company to an independent third country...all they requested--pro forma in formal extradition arrangements--was evidence supporting the allegations against bin Laden and company. Bush refused.

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0905c.asp

Our wars are wars not of necessity, but of choice--in fact, first choice--and aside from the terrible cost in human slaughter, to no productive end, nearly a decade later, we have squandered national treasure that could have been far better spent here at home. And the drain on our treasure is not ended, but will continue for years.

Mr Cook--you are, of course, correct in the strictess sense, when you say wars are of choice not necessity--but my thought is that there are some wars that are dictated by necessity.

Involving a non-state actor such as AQ makes the definition of war a bit more problematic. It's much easier when Japanese forces attack pearl harbor for example. But irrespective of the circumstances nations do have to respond.

Perhaps the difference is the nature of the response? I have no facile answers, but I believe a bit more (dare I say) nuance is required.

"297. Of course, if water boils in a pot, steam comes out of the pot and also pictured steam come out of the pictured pot. But what if one insisted on saying that there must also be something boiling in the picture of the pot?"

- Wittgenstein

I've given up trying to one-up parody the NYT editorial page. It's no longer possible.

Hannah Arendt's remark about the banality of evil is famous, and I have come to think that she may have had in mind the slipshod grammar, the motives neither high and noble nor interestingly debased, the indifference to accuracy about technical matters, the ...

The slipshod grammar. For instance, "These dogs are bred to kill, and their training is part of their genetics."

One of the things that I took away from Econ 101 was that in certain situations, a totalitarian state might be advantageous for the short run economically. And, we may be seeing that right now with China.

The basic problem is that in a lot of the 3rd World back then (less today), birth rates exceeded GDP growth. And, as a result, the countries could not get to the point where they could take off economically.

So, I wasn't all that surprised when China instituted their One Child policy. It likely wasn't really aimed at limiting their huge population, per se, but rather, at this problem. And, yes, it seems to have succeeded.

But, I think that we will, in the not too distant future, see the limits of their approach. Already, they are seeing their dominance in low-cost labor disappearing as some types of manufacturing move to lower cost countries like Vietnam. And, they can't expect to see the sort of off-shoring that India sees, due to a number of factors including language, courts, and business climate.

Whenever anyone tries to convince me that the Red Chinese have a winning strategy, I point out that we are finding that government intervention stifles economic growth. What about a country run by a self-appointed cadre of geriatrics? Rulers who advanced through their revolutionary fervor. The country that really invented civil service, civil servants, and mandarins?

To me, that is a plan that starts by asking: what is America’s core competency and strategic advantage, and how do we nurture it? Answer: It is our ability to attract, develop and unleash creative talent. That means men and women who invent, build and sell more goods and services that make people’s lives more productive, healthy, comfortable, secure and entertained than any other country.

Right! And you know what creative people like? Rules! Lots of rules and regulations, and forms to fill out and permissions to be sought! There's nothing that brightens their day like going down to City Hall or the State Capitol or DC to ask permission, or to fill out forms.

Sigh. I'll post it again:The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (Invasion of Afghanistan)passed theHouse of Reps 420 to 1 and the Senate 98-0. The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq passed the House of Representatives 297-133 and the Senate 77-23.

But it's all W's fault? And why are we still there now? Plenty of blame to go around, I think.

oh roger roger roger..there you go again. my my. TV ownership...a sign that the "poor" don't have it so bad. hell they've go TVs. you can eat TVs and you can pay the bills with TVs, feed your kid a TV, go to college on a TV...they, those miscrean poor folks...they got CARS ....some of them rascals even use them to go to jobs or look for one...can you imagine? the never. shit. sometime some peckerwood will want a cell phone...but that's ok as cell phones are cheaper than normal phones but if they want then can just call up that dirt poor neighbor and tell 'em they are getting in the car to come over and watch TV.

ya'betcha.

oh, and boys, your argument is so mindlessly banal as to make chickens shit bricks. but you knew that didn't you. all 50 IQ points of you knew that...you just wanted to have some fun with the poor..tell 'em how good they have it with all those TVs and all...see if they believe you....becha they don't. hell man, i'm a liberal and I don't believe your argument is worth the other side of the toilet paper.

You seem to want us to accept that Bush simply assented to the nearly unanimous demand by Congress that we go to war. No. The Bush Administration used the 9/11 tragedy to manipulate both Congress and the nation into rushing to judgement that war was necessary, right and just.

Were there many in Congress who didn't need much convincing? Sure...no doubt. They're complicit in Bush's war crimes as well. But had Bush not wanted to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, we never would have.

We're still involved in these wars now because Obama is carrying on with his predecessors' murderous policies. No President wants to be the one who brings our troops home without a victory, so Obama slogs on with our amorphous, doomed "mission" to avoid being labeled "the man who turned tail and ran."

Bush was an enthusiastic mass murderer, he wanted to go to war; Obama is a mass murderer because he has no character and is too cowardly to remove us from the devastation we have made.

PACIFISM The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States...All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty..

The line of succession among NYT Supreme High Pundits goes thus: Walter Lippmann, James Reston, and Thomas Friedman. After the Nationalists fled the mainland and occupied Taiwan, Lippmann recommended that the US fleet be withdrawn from the straits of Formosa. Chiang Kai Shek was a fascist and did not deserve our protection. Let us note that Taiwan is now a democracy--the first in China's four thousand year history--and has a living standard at least ten times higher than that of the mainland. Let us further note that this is not due to the wisdom of Walter Lippmann... Just recently I was spot reading James Reston's book, Memoirs. He visited China at the time of Nixon's first visit. He astutely noted that there were no overweight Chinese. Less astutely, he attributed this to the fact that the Chinese ate with chopsticks and that it is difficult to overeat with chopsticks. Mass starvation is another possible explanation. He had a respectful interview with Chou En Lai in which he passed along with tacit approval Chou's statement that China's involvement in the Korean War was due to our bellicosity.....At the time of Nixon's visit, China was going through the Cultural Revolution. The remarkable thing was not that China was descending into madness but that western journalists observed this madness and thought it was a noble experiment. A Chinese Red Brigade member later observed "We wanted to lie and you wanted to believe us". Funny how this type of credulity was not given to Nixon....Well, Friedman continues in the long tradition of NYT Pundits who get it wrong.

Yes, all we need to do is adopt a self-destructive style of government for forty years and then change back. We'll be so far behind everyone else the economy will boom as we catch up (in another thirty years or so).

We just need to go through that forty years of starvation and poverty.

Do you not think, however, that a murder is a tragedy, and many murders even greater tragedy?

We have, in response to the murders on 9/11, murdered many many more people than were killed that day, most of whom had no connection with the 9/11 murderers or their killings...people mostly "going peacefully about their business," as you state in the portion of your quote I elided. Our murders are also a tragedy. (As are the related crimes we have undertaken: torture, the rendering of millions into homeless refugees, the destruction of a nation's civic infrastructure, the kidnapping and imprisonment of untold numbers on mostly unfounded suspicion of connections to terrorists or terrorism, etc.)

Here's one dictionary entry, if you remain unconvinced:

"Tra-ge-dy (noun)

An even causing great suffering, destruction and distress, such as a serious accident, crime, or natural catastrophe."